Visionaries, designers, planners, policymakers, and project managers abound. Strategists are rare.
As a result, regenerative efforts most often fail due to 1) bad strategy, and 2) no strategy.
Let’s start by clarifying strategy’s role in the scheme of things:
- Visions guide actions to the desired outcomes;
- Strategies adaptively guide actions to success;
- Policies enable strategic actions;
- Plans organize actions
- Projects are actions;
- Programs perpetuate actions.
Of those six action elements, the plan—which often takes longest to produce and approve—will likely be obsolete the soonest. Complex systems (e.g. cities, ecosystems) resist rigid, imposed order.
All of these action elements are essential, but one is usually missing: strategy. That’s why so many urban revitalization and landscape-scale environmental restoration programs are unsuccessful.
Read the full article on the Revitalization News website here.
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